I'll Be Seeing You
by Padfootwolfboy
Summary: Remus wakes disappointed from his dream. "I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places"


**Title:** I'll Be Seeing You  
**Pairing:** Sirius/Remus  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Summary:** Remus wakes disappointed from his dream. _"I'll be seeing you _/ _In all the old familiar places"  
_**Notes:** Angst ahead. Character death. Slight melancholy insanity.

He likes the nighttime better. In the dark and emptiness, he feels more secure, he thinks. He likes to pretend that the world has fallen away and that it is just him and the broken old bed on which he lays, with the shadows surrounding. It feels safer, less ominous. It is strange, he tells himself, that he should go against all natural instincts and feel calmer when he is blind and his senses dulled. The shadows hide all and that is exactly was Remus wants them to do.

When the morning comes again, the bloodied morn with its light and warmth and life that is still not Sirius, he arises and wonders what evil befell him that he could not die during the previous night. He goes into the small kitchen of his shabby flat and fixes tea and toast, in that order. It is his ritual, his sense of normalcy. As long as the kettle is piping and the bread is still waiting to be buttered, he can imagine that Sirius is taking a late morning to himself, that his dark ebon hair and cheeky yet tired grin will peak around the corner any minute now and ask about breakfast.

Then Remus can respond that he is fixing it right now; the tea should be up in a minute, he is almost done with the toast.

But no one answers his reply when Remus tells the clock on the wall to sit down at the table and he will bring the food out. Nor is his chair pulled out or the morning paper propped up against the fruit bowl like he requests. Sirius must have forgotten. He seems to do that on a regularly basis now.

Sometimes when he lies down to sleep he feels like all his troubles mast together above him, pressing down into him. A heavy dark black objective suffocates him, one firm hand flattening out his chest and a firm solid weight sinking into his hips. He cannot move and cannot fight back. Yet he does not panic. He knows it is only Sirius and his mind. He knows he will awake in the morning and it will be gone. His cheeks will no longer be smushed back nor his eyes gauged.

And he wonders to himself if it is necessarily healthy to always wake disappointed that it was just a dream.

He has spent most of his time alone, now. Reclusive and quiet, he does not get many visitors. Someone from his old life stops by every few weeks to bring him news of once-friends, or check that he is still functioning. Why hasn't he offed himself yet?

Ginny Weasley is the one who frequents him most. She comes baring news of new jobs, of graduations. She tells him how he was sorely missed at Hermoine and Ron's wedding. She tells him to come to Little Harry's third birthday party. One day as she apparates into the kitchen, she is crying and tells Remus between unexplained sobs that Hermoine was killed in a Death Eater attack. She asks him if he will be all right after hearing about her death, but he simply stares at her with a blank expression and sips his tea.

Remus always responds the same; tells her to inform Harry to come talk with him for a while one day.

Ginny's sobs worsen, heartbroken by the shell of such a brilliant man before her and the fact that she still doesn't have the heart to tell him that Harry died eight years ago at sixteen. She cannot tell him that they found him in the bathroom, the razor a few inches form his blood-covered fingertips, and the note _I'm coming, Sirius_ scrawled on a piece of parchment next to him. If she only told him this once more, he would just panic, asking where Sirius was, shocked at Harry's demise.

She thanks Remus kindly for the tea, wiping her tears away, and leaves abruptly.

One day before the full moon, Remus finds his old record player and an old Billie Holiday LP. It is the one he and Sirius used to dance to all the time. He asks Sirius to dance with him this time but Sirius doesn't answer. Remus turns around to look for him and sees Sirius nowhere. He scavenges the flat, looking for one trace of him and yet there is nothing.

Near tears, he sits glumly on his bed, head in hands. Sirius' photo—the last photograph ever taken of him—glares at him from next to Buckbeak in the frame. A small smile sometimes lights his face, but very rarely.

It is then that Remus remembers. He remembers the Veil and Bellatrix and wrapping a protective hand around Harry to save his life when all he wanted to do is jump behind the veil himself.

Suddenly, he does not know what to do. He knows he has gone insane. He knows he has lived in the same day-to-day activity for the last eight years with no semblance of understanding Sirius' death. He still cannot completely grasp his death.

There is no one there this time to stop him, not like the last four times when the last remaining molecule of sanity strikes the bell in his mind and he knows Sirius will never be coming back. There is no one there and when Ginny comes two weeks later all she finds is an empty flat.

An old LP is still playing, Billie Holiday singing.

_I'll be seeing you  
In all the old familiar places  
That this heart of mine embraces  
All day through._


End file.
